Semiconducting nanowires have received much attention due to their promise as building blocks of miniaturized electrical, nanofluidic and optical devices, including nanolasers, light emitting devices, and subwavelength optical waveguides. Current chemical nanowire synthesis procedures that yield nanowires with specific compositions and growth directions, when these materials are used in scientific, biomedical, and microelectronic applications, is greatly restricted due to a lack of methods to easily assemble nanowires into functional structures. Several nanowire assembly techniques have been established and are still being researched, including electrostatic interactions, Langmuir-Blodgett/dip-coating, magnetic field assembly, mechanically applied shear forces, and dielectrophoresis.
Electrospinning is a technique that employs electrostatic interactions and results in electrostatic forming of yarn. This technique requires that the nanowires are suspended in a polymer or polymer solution. Electrospinning also uses a large electric field at a high cost to draw the polymer through a nozzle. The result of the electrospinning is a mix of nanowires and polymer.
Accordingly, a need exists for a new and improved method of assembling and modifying semiconducting nanowire structures. These needs and others are met within the present disclosure, which overcomes the deficiencies of previously developed semiconducting nanowire assembly methods.